Archive for December, 2008

As most of you are probably aware, it’s sometimes hard to tell what season it is here in San Diego simply by looking out the window. There have already been a few 90 degree days in November. The leaves on some of the trees do turn color and fall off, but that usually doesn’t happen until about New Year’s Day.

So, there are a couple of strategies to try to get into the “mood” for the season. The first is to just look at the calendar. We kicked off the season with Halloween in our last post (no worries here about making sure your costume is big enough to fit your winter coat under!) The next big event on the November calendar is Election Day. I’ll leave the political discussions to another blog, but we did take Sophie with us when we voted (someone needed to make the big decisions!).

The other strategies San Diegans use to get into the fall mood is something we call “Going to Julian.” No one is quite sure why, but for some reason in the fall people feel the irresistible need to get in their cars and drive for an hour to the mountains and eat apple pie. We decided Sophie needed to experience this right of passage so she would know what the “seasons” are.

So we packed up the car with provisions and headed east into the mountains. Since this is the kind of journey you can’t do all at once, we decided to make a pit stop in Ramona. We had heard that they had a couple of small wineries there and wanted to check them out. We stopped at the Schwaesdall Winery. They had a nice little tasting room run by the couple that actually owns the winery and makes the wine. After tasting a little wine and stopping for lunch

we started off on the second leg of our journey, finally making it to Julian by late afternoon. And what did we find when we got there? A huge traffic jam and hundreds of people lined up down the block just to eat pie! (I know, I know, this shouldn’t be a surprise, but when you go there in April the place is deserted). We did eventually find a place to park and spent a few hours wandering through all of the little shops in town.

And we even managed to get some pie.

All in all it turned out to be a great day.

We even brought some wine and pie back to civilization and went over to Niki and Rick’s the next day to share.